Instagram System Design (Feed, Stories & Media at Scale)

Design a photo-sharing social media platform like Instagram where users can upload photos, follow others, and view feeds.

Constraints

Functional

Upload photos with captions, follow/unfollow, home feed (photos from followed users), user profiles, like/comment, stories (24 hours)

Non-functional

1B users, 500M DAU, billions of images, feed < 300ms, 99.99% uptime

Scale

1B users, 500M DAU; ~1B photos/day, ~200 KB avg, ~200 TB/day; ~5B feed reads/day, peak ~60K/s

Stages ahead

1Requirement Analysis
2API Design
3High-Level Design
4HLD Extensions
5Trade-offs
Instagram System Design (Feed, Stories & Media at Scale)